Hatchlings
by bluethursday
Summary: Damian is the biological child of Tim and Bruce. Ra's has sped up the aging process so that Damian is six, Tim at the time of Damian's creation is twelve.


Summary: Damian is the biological child of Tim and Bruce. Ra's has sped up the aging process so that Damian is six, Tim at the time of Damian's creation is twelve.

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Bruce walks up to the four story house in trepidation. The last time he saw Tim, he was twelve years old and walking away from everything Bruce had ever built.

….

A vicious snarl changed the youngest Robin's face, "What do you mean you don't know what to do?"

Bruce looked down at the child in Tim's arms. Another experiment gone wrong, dark blue eyes looked up at him from a small face. Only six years old but he had Bruce's eyes. Damian, his son, their son. The son Ra's had made, pieced together from the detectives flesh and that of his youngest Robin.

Tim tucked Damian against his side protectively, hands caressing the nape of the smaller boy's neck in a soothing manner. Only twelve years old and Tim had chosen his side. Bruce stared down at his youngest Robin. "I don't know what to do with a child."

The snarl deepened, it made the thin boy look far older than he was, an adult not a small boy holding up a smaller child. A parent. Bruce had once seen that look on the face of his own mother. "You take him home and you raise him. You love him. You've done it before."

Bruce flinched underneath the cowl. "I can't. Dick and Jason weren't six. He'll be better off somewhere else, until he's older. Safer." Damian didn't say a word fingers clutching at Tim, some animal hind brain informing him that this was his blood.

Tim nodded, eyes spitting fire. "You're right. He would be better off somewhere else." Ripping the domino from his face Tim continued. "He'd be better off with me."

Bruce knew that he should have said something. Anything but all he could see was his son walking off with a stranger. Tim had always been this wonderful, perfect thing. Bruce would watch him in quiet awe as he handled the lives of Bruce Wayne and Batman all at once. As he took care of things when Bruce couldn't, picked up his slack in a way no other Robin did. He watched Tim leave, Damian in hand and he didn't say a word.

….

He can hear the sound of laughter coming from the backyard, slowly he makes his way past the fence separating the backyard from the front. He never told anyone about the youngest Robin. About their…son. He couldn't. He didn't have room, he didn't have time. Jason had returned, and then Dick but Tim, wonderful perfect Tim haunted the manor like a ghost. Alfred knew, somehow, and every once in a while he would stare at Bruce in disappointment.

The first thing he sees is Tim lounging by the pool. He's the loveliest thing Bruce has ever seen, all long milky limbs and rose colored lips. "Damian," Tim calls out, "Be careful sweetheart."

The boy swimming laps in the pool with military precision calls back. "Of course mother."

Mother? He supposes that it suits Tim. Mother. Tim is sixteen years old.

Both of them ignore Bruce although he knows they know he's present. Tim cocks his head towards Bruce, leaving his place on the outdoor lounge chair situated by the pool to face him. "Why are you here Bruce?"

Blue eyes meet blue. "Come back." Bruce asks. He demands. He pleads. Come back because you are a ghost in the household. A single wraith that hangs above my head. A regret I never wanted to have.

"No." Tim will not subject his son to a father who may not be capable of loving him the way he needs to be loved. Tim will not lower himself to be a son in Bruce's house, not when he's been a parent for far too long, not when he's built an empire strong enough to keep his son safe. He has been neutral in Bruce's war for a long time and he's spilled blood to protect his child, would spill blood again.

He will not lower himself to be a son in Bruce's household.

Bruce can do nothing but nod and walk away. He will return. Both of them know this, but Tim has always been stronger than Bruce. Tim has no mission to place before his son. He has nothing to stop him from breaking Batman's neck if he hurts Tim's child. Bruce does not have the same luxury.

Damian waits until the large shadow of his sperm donor leaves before speaking. "Has he finally come for you mother?" Tim turns towards Damian before sitting down by the edge of the pool, legs dipping into into lukewarm water. "For us, love. He's come for us."

**Snapshots:**

**Mother**

Curling his fingers into his mothers pale pink, frilled apron, Damian stood still as Tim cleaned the syrup off his face with a damp cloth. "There we go sweetheart" Tim cooed, placing a kiss on top of his son's head.

**Care**

Every morning Damian had a healthy breakfast, a packed lunch and an interesting book placed into his backpack for the sole purpose of preventing boredom. Today it was The Art of War. Last week it had been Torture Devices of the Medieval Period. Mother always chose the best books.

**Mother Bear**

Damian sat in the principals office, staring darkly at the fat pudgy man who ran the school. So what if he had broken the arm of a fellow student, that filth had dared to speak ill of his mother, then had the audacity to demand Damian's "lunch money". The only fear Damian felt was of his mothers reaction. He wouldn't be pleased.

When Tim came through the door with the kind of grace that rarely made an appearance within the school setting he gave the principal a look reserved for the things that got stuck on the sole of one's shoe. Dressed in a pale grey suit, Tim stalked towards the desk. Damian smirked, mother was vicious. He was also on Damian's side.

If Damian could feel pity for the fat man, he would.

**Idiots**

Watching the other boys watch his mother, made him feel the sudden urge to push a few of them down the stairs. Disgusting, he thought, as if they were worthy of _his_mother? Tim stepped outside of the car to usher him in, the chauffeur silent as the petit man enveloped his son in a hug.

**Pride**

Mothers fingers were long and slender as they soothed a ruffled temper and offered water. The ride home was always spent tucked into mothers side, head pressed against cool silk as he remembered doing the same action when he was very young. This always made Damian smile, mother had always been a wonderful parent. He often watched the other children with their nannies, and their au de pairs and felt pride in the fact that mother had raised him, not some stranger paid to care for him.

**Father**

Damian often brought his mother flowers. Father wasn't there to do so, so it fell to Damian to do the little things that made Tim smile. Father was an imposing figure in his mind, he had never really been present and although mother spoke of him, explained all that occurred, Damian felt no ties to the other man. He almost hated his father, the cretinous sperm donor who had left his mother, twelve years old at the time, to raise their child.

He brought his mother flowers because they didn't need Bruce Wayne. They were fine being just the two of them, in their own little world. He would love his mother enough to make up for the utter stupidity of his biological donor..

**Other Lives**

Damian sometime dreamed, he dreamed of endless night and shadow, of a time when he wasn't loved, not unconditionally. He dreamt of a tall figure he wanted to make proud. He dreamt of trying to kill his mother and failing. He dreamt of mother cold and unloving. He spent that night throwing up into the toilet.

**Son**

Tim thought of his son, the son whose father he left behind, abandoned in Gotham to his mission and his darkness. He smiled a little smile when he thought of his precocious child. Damian was a handful, but he was sweet and so very intelligent, if a little violent. He was also his, his child and Tim swore that he would be a better parent than his parents. He would be loving, and attentive. He would be there for his son, and that, that meant a lot. He would love him enough for two people, for the father Damian didn't have.

**Assistance**

When Tim started to get headaches, Damian sat his mother down and pressed a cold, damp cloth to his forehead. "You need to take better care of yourself. " Tim sighed. "I do take care of myself, and if that fails, I have you sweetheart." Damian frowned "Tt". His mother was being far too careless.

**Hatchlings Family: **

The table is private, silent and tasteful. Bruce Wayne sits without the mask of the flighty, caddish, Brucie and holds himself, instead, as the man beneath the veneer of the air headed socialite. A soldier.

Across from him sits a figure in black.

The waiters whisper that the boy… no man, no, devil, for no one could be as he was without some unholy power, must have been the deity Bruce Wayne sold his soul to.

Those whispers would never leave the night. The restaurant kept its secrets.

The boy beside the wraith, they presume to be some guard disguised as a child. His eyes were stones of the darkest blue, and he watched Mr. Wayne with a cruel sharpness.

They would take caution with that table this night. They could not risk offending such dark gods as these.

…

Swirling the red wine in his glass, Tim does not drink.

"Wine, Bruce?" He intones.

Batman smiles, tilting his own glass towards Tim.

"I believe you had asked to be treated as an equal."

Tim places the wine back onto the table. He knows that Bruce is angry at both him and himself. The small jab at his age will not be tolerated. He had come to negotiate not squabble. Placing a calming hand on his son's shoulder, Tim replies.

"I have never equated drinking with age. I suppose Brucie's drunken buffoonery has affected your thought process. I don't like alcohol."

Bruce understands the rebuttal as it is intended. _Stop the bullshit Bruce, I don't have to be here._

"I want you to come back." Bruce repeats. A question that he had asked once before. Tonight Tim will ask for more than that.

"First, I want you to tell me how, then I want you to tell me why."

Signaling the waiter to bring them sparkling apple cider of the finest quality in place of the wine, Bruce begins.

" Over a period of two to four months, perhaps a year, Brucie Wayne will change. It is already known that the Wayne's are funding Batman. Brucie will still be flighty but he will stop his dates, inferring a long term relationship. This one will last."

Pausing to sip his apple juice, Bruce ignores the steak on his plate, as does Damian. Tim has ordered the chicken.

"We will then present our relationship to the public. A few press photos will reveal that I am in a relationship with Timothy Drake, thirty something year old CEO, with a ten year old son."

Damian watches every movement Bruce makes. The older man can just make out the concealed weapons on his son's person. He pointedly, does not raise an eyebrow.

"We will then get engaged and subsequently married. I will adopt Damian as my son, and as one of my heirs."

Tim snorts, "The press will massacre Damian as well as me. Brucie Wayne is too strong of a figure for there to be any other reaction."

Bruce frowns, "I can control the press, to an extent. Any way we chose to do this will cause controversy .

Tim sighs, "I know, public opinion is hard to change."

Damian takes a sip of his apple cider, the first food he's imbibed all diner. He will agree with his mother's decision, whatever that may be.

"Would you prefer to simply begin a relationship?" Bruce offers.

Tim hums, "I would be vilified just as much both ways. Either that or pitied."

Bruce stabs at his meal.

"Regardless of how we do this, neither of us will come out unscathed. If we chose either course, we will simply have to wait out the coming storm."

Tim has known this just as well as Bruce. There will be no other way, but one filled with press lights and various articles speculating on their private lives. Brucie Wayne has always been pan sexual, he has never been monogamous.

Placing his knife back down on his plate Bruce tries to answer the second question. The more difficult of the two. The why.

"I would like to have my family under one roof. I would like to meet my son and the person who raised him."

Bruce knows that Tim has changed. After all this time he could do nothing but change. After being a single parent for four years, the older man would never expect him to be the same.

"I would like to love both of you the way you deserve."

The words are awkward and stilted but more than that, they are honest.

Tim rises from his seat and excuses himself. "I must retire to the restroom. I will return with my decision."

He has deliberately left two pit bulls at the same table with no barrier in between them. He will judge his answer by the damage left after he returns.

…

Damian waits for Tim to disappear before speaking, "You will fail. You do not deserve mother."

Some part of Damian has always wished for a father who wanted him, who wanted mother and a family. He knows this man is not that person.

Bruce considers the statement, "I do not deserve your mother. I never will, but I will keep both of you safe."

Damian traces the hilt of a single knife, "What of love sperm donor? Where have all your declarations of devotion gone?"

Bruce takes pause at the words used to describe his place in Damian's life, "I will love you. Both of you, and despite my absence in your life I remain your father."

"Tt. Blood does not a father make."

Bruce can see his own face overlaid on Damian's. They have the same eyes and his nose has grown to be much like the one on Bruce's had been before it broke in two places, slanting it minutely to the right. Tim's delicate slope was nowhere to be seen.

"Then I _will_ be your father Damian." Bruce commands, his eyes darken, the things he's locked away so very long ago coming to the forefront.

"I will be a husband to your mother and I will have both of you. One way. Or another."

Damian, for the first time, sees himself in that dark possessiveness. In the gritty determination Bruce displayed. He will not be kind to this man, perhaps he will never be kind to this man, but for a moment Damian can see his father within Bruce Wayne. He can see the man he will grow to be in the span of Bruce's shoulders, the width of his back. He will have this man's size, his aggression.

Damian sees a man who loves his mother and has denied it for far too long. A man who loves Damian in spite of himself.

When Tim returns he takes one look at his son and gives his answer.

"Yes."

…

**Getting Ready:**

Waiting patiently for his mother to be ready for dinner Damian plays with one of the many knives hidden on his person.

Mother may have disapproved of killing but he was always adamant that Damian know hoe to defend himself. He knew not what connected his mother to Lady Shiva, but the older assassin had trained him for years upon the request of his sole parent. He had learned all she had to teach.

Damian had affection for the woman he called Aunt, for the most part due to the respect she showed Tim. The rest was due to the skills she had imparted to him.

Tonight, they would dine with his sperm donor. If things went badly he would need every skill he had learned under her tutelage to settle things. He refused to allow his mother to face Bruce Wayne alone.

…

The carefully pressed and tailored suit extenuated Tim's loveliness as he smoothed Damian's hair hair and straightened his tie, an unconscious gesture he had adopted through years of preparing his son for outings.

The suit Tim wore was a sombre shade of ebony. Black suit, black shirt, black tie. For today the black seemed oddly appropriate, as opposed to his usual preference for pastel.

Tim had always seemed older than he was, his eyes were too aged for the rest of him. The black aged him further. Tim was believably sixteen, and thirty six all at once. His was the type who aged with a timeless sort of grace.

…

**Dick**

Dick wonders how far back the two knew each other. Perhaps past Dick himself, given Damian's age. The way the circled around each other warily, suggested just that. He supposed that they had both been wounded by the other in some way.

He would ask why he never met Tim but he knows without a doubt that Tim is and has, by the look of it, always been dangerous.

He wonders how Damian was made but all he gets when asks the child is the disgusted snort of, "Tt. Sperm donor."

He can't begin to unravel the confusion behind the explanation given. What Dick does piece together is this.

Neither Tim not Bruce expected Damian but while Bruce had struggled with his existance Tim had not, causing a rift between them.

**Jason**

Jason carried the same confusion as Dick.

Both had watched warily as the the stranger named Tim entered the manor.

Alfred was perhaps the sole being who found the new additions bearable, probably because Damian referred to him as grandfather. They suspected that the two had known each other long before either of them ever knew of Damian's existence.

Bruce had been wary, high strung and greatly invested in ensuring the best possible welcome for the two.

The explanation he had given was that it was something he should have done a long time ago.

…

Jason meets Tim and something in him shudders.

He does not know who Tim is or was, but something about him is rejected by Jason. He is so very angry. He supposes that if someone left him with a kid to raise alone, he wouldn't have been happy either.

Except he knows that's not the main reason for the smaller man's rage. He knows that Tim adores Damian, would do almost anything, if not anything for the boy. He thinks that at some point, Bruce fucked things up bad, and this is the only way he knows how to fix it.

He wonders how long Bruce ran away, ignoring the problem before trying to salvage what had been broken.

Jason imagines what would have happened if he woke from the dead only to find Bruce with a brand new family and shudders.

The answer isn't kind.

He wonders if he was the reason Bruce pushed his former lover and son so far away.

For Jason?

He doesn't like the feel of the thought, the sound of it, and he hopes that something more caused the rift between the two.

He wonders what it would have been like to have a mom who would have stood up to the Joker himself, on behalf of their child. Because he knows that would have done it. Knows it the way he knows the sky is blue.

He can't help but be jealous of Damian for having that. A mothers love.

**Hatchlings: Mirror**

Damian stares at himself, another version of him, displaced but fairly sane. He is cautious, his mother has taught him to be.

"I appear to be misplaced." His double states.

"You are welcome to stay until you return to your own world, given that you do not meddle in this one. You are a visitor not a resident."

His twin inclines his head in agreement. He is glad that all versions of him appear to be to be reasonable.

He wonders how mother will react, but he knows this Damian will be loved as well, mother could never hate him.

…

Tim raised one perfect black eyebrow at the double image in front of him.

The double does a second take as he sees Tim, for the first time Damian wonders if maybe this him did not have mother in his life.

"I see, you must not have had mother as a parent in your world. Here I am the biological child of Timothy Drake and Bruce Wayne."

"How. Why. How did this occur?" His double is clearly in shock.

Tim speaks for the first time, his tone soothing, "Your grandfather decided it was best to make a child from what he considered the best Robin, and Batman. You didn't like me in your world did you?"

Tim can see it in the defensive posturing, in the way his son's twin looks ready to run.

"I hated you. My mother was Talia Al Ghul."

Tim understands the sadness that hovers the boy, he does not know what life was like for an Al Ghul, but he can imagine. He knows that Talia did not have a large hand in raising the boy, he probably only met her at an older age. This little boy never had a parent, not really, not like his Damian.

Tim hums in response, he knows this will his haunt his son's twin but he says it none the less, everyone should know that they are loved. "I have a very good idea of what life must have been like for you as and Al Ghul, and I will say this, both because you need to hear it, and because it is true. You are loved Damian. I will love you and all your versions, without compunction or condition, just as you are. You are always welcome to stay here."

The double does not know what to say but he enters the house none the less. Tim considers it a victory. Damian has heard of Ra's, has met him when the older man attempted to steal his mother away. He has never liked the Demon's Head. He has never liked Talia.

He is grateful, more so now then ever that his mother was who he was. He would not have liked the life his other self lived.

…

In the dark of the night his twin asks a question, "What was life like for you?"

Because Damian, the Damian from elsewhere can see that he is still skilled and smart and incredibly well trained, yet here, he seems so much more…balanced. He wants to know just what caused him to be so content.

Damian sighs, "Mother came and got me when I was born. He took me away when my sperm donor did not want me. He raised me and protected me and trained me."

Damian thinks of Sunday morning waffles, and the the peaches he ate very wednesday because mother always bought peaches on wednesday.

"He used to sing me lullabies, he still does it now, when I'm tired and he would read me stories both children's and more advanced literature. We would go out to the beaches and mountains and he would always make whatever I wanted to eat for dinner, he still does. He cooks all our food even though we can easily afford a chef because he does not want me to get sick from what other people make."

The other Damian recalls the time he got food poisoning. The chef had been hanged, but he had spent two days throwing up the contents of his stomach.

"He tells me that he loves me and shows it so much more because he has never missed a celebration or an event he felt should be celebratory. He is just as proud of me when I stay home and do nothing as when I perfect a martial art form."

He can remember the disappointed look on his mother, Talia's face as he failed to preform a complex kata. He does not think he has ever been allotted time to do nothing.

"My Tim, the Tim from my world, he was Robin, before me."

Damian hums, much like the other Damian had seen Tim do, "Mother gave up Robin when I was born. He said that he didn't want me to have to compete with anything for his attention."

"I tried to kill him." Because Damian needs to put it out there, he can not listen to this praise without this confession.

He knows that this other him had not succeeded because the wording is different, but the statement hurts none the less. He can not imagine trying to kill mother. He can not even try, the idea is so repulsive to him.

"Mother, my mother, Talia, once put probes in spine to control my movement when I did not do as she wished."

The swift change of topic does not dissuade Damian, "Mother, Tim, was raised much like you, except differently. My grandparents left him alone as a small child for long spans of time, only seeing him rarely and leaving him with little to no supervision. It is why he tried so hard to have a hand in raising me."

His other snaps, "What is the point of this."

He continues, "The point is that your Tim could care for you if given the chance and neither of us enjoy being overlooked."

His twin goes silent and listens as he lays out all that he has pieced together of his mothers past, all the things his mother had admitted as he grew old enough to ask.

…

When Damian returns from the strange world where Drake, Tim, was his mother he sits through all the usual tests and says nothing until he goes to the room Tim stays in, laying on the bed. He wants to be loved the way his other self was and it had been proven that Drake could do so, all Damian had to do

was explain himself.

Tim would discover all other plans but the truth.

Damian would try.


End file.
